Kaw Valley Almanac

Monday is the first day of fall, and sumac lower leaves have turned red for a while, along with some virginia creeper vines, to name a few. It’s increasingly common to see blackbird flocks around sunset, yellowing cottonwood leaves and foggy mornings when it’s calm.

With the old Osage name for August — Yellow Flower Moon — named for the many goldenrods and sunflower tribe blooming, it’s now a more appropriate name for September due to the longer growing season.

A pair of yellow soldier beetles and a nearby yellow cucumber beetle blend into the blossoms of a sawtooth sunflower.

This Pearl Crescent butterfly was blending in nicely to the yellow ray flowers of the sweet coneflower. This time of year, you can find many insects and spiders colored similar to the flowers they hang out on, either to hide from predators, or hide as predators.

Controlled summer burns are hotter and more effective in pushing back woody plants from prairie remnants.

Big bluestem has seeded out and is pollinating. Their seedheads can be taller than a person, and is also known by the name “turkey foot” due to the resemblance to the footprint of a turkey.

This adult cicada is emerging from its nymph exoskeleton shell, still upside down and its wings still curled up on its back. It will right itself and the wings will unfurl and dry, and the cicada will take on its familiar colors before flying off.

Believe it or not, these bugs are the same species: the two mating adult green stink bugs on the right looked like the round striped bug on the left when they were in the nymph stage.

Ironweed is blooming its beautiful purple blossoms across the state, with six species in Kansas that all attract a wide variety of bees, beetles, wasps, and in this case, a skipper butterfly.

This is National Moth Week, and people all over the world are leaving their porch lights on or draping sheets over a bush with a light underneath to photograph them.

Wasps have a practice of stinging and paralyzing caterpillars and insects to lay eggs into so their offspring will have something to eat. But most wasps, such as this Parazumia, live by eating flower nectar.

The bumblebee stashes the pollen in pollen sacks or corbicula, located on its legs, to take back home to feed the young bees and queen.

It’s been raining a lot in much of Kansas — not necessarily what wheat harvest and haying needs, but less than a quarter of the state is currently in some sort of drought, which is a considerable improvement overall.

With the Fourth of July still a week away, area prairies continue to shoot off their floral fireworks, like this sensitive brier. Bees collect the yellow pollen and quail like to eat the seeds.

Many in eastern Kansas are experiencing the annual explosion of hackberry butterflies, which typically perch with their wings folded together. Here they’re sunning themselves by opening their wings.